In early autumn 2007 I saw thousands of these ladybirds, mostly on the paths, in Northdown House Gardens, Cliftonville, Kent. There were so many you couldn't avoid treading on them. I thought at the time it was a worrying sight after the bad press they had had and so I shall be interested to find out if they are goodies or badies.

The harlequin has established in the UK very rapidly over the past 3 years and it's obviously here for the forseeable future. In Asia (its homeland), it has a preference for tree dwelling aphids, so perhaps we'll be thankful that those messy woolly beech tree aphids and sycamore aphids might now be kept under control!

I jointly coordinate the UK Harlequin Ladybird Survey with Peter Brown (NERC Centre for Ecology and Hydrology), Mike Majerus (Cambridge University) and Remy Ware (Cambridge University). We would be very pleased to hear of any harlequin ladybird sightings, particularly in the North of England and Scotland. Please visit our website:

Can somebody please tell me what the lavra look like from the Harlequin ladybird. I have some Evening Primroses which have had the top of their growth distorted and are covered in aphids. These in turn are being eaten by what I thought was ordinary ladybird lavra until somebody said that they shouldn't have the orange stripe across their backs. They have started to pupae and are orange 'blobs' on the middle of the leaves. I literally have too many to count, though the children from the local school have tried every time they walk home. Is there anybody who can help, the only pictures I can find of ladybird lavra is that of a black one with the occasional orange speck. Thank you to whoever answers

I have had literally thousands in my window frames they get into the house are noisy they seem to have a habit of falling onto hard services I,ve hooverd them out and wash down the windows but still they come their a bloody pest!

I have just found one of these big black with two red spots ladybirds in the bedroom. presumably it has overwintered under the bed and is now looking for escape. Now that I know it's not that 'dangerous' I have let it out, and no, it didn't bite the hand that rescued it!
There are lots of our 'normal' ladybirds clustered on posts in the garden, so I guess they outnumber it by quite a few and all help to defeat the aphids is welcome in our garden.

I found a Harlequin ladybird in a friends garden and also a lot of ladybird larva. I was not aware at the time that it was a Harlequin until checking on your site.
I would like to know whether I should destroy these ladybirds?

Hi, For the first noticable time, the
south face of my house is alive with Harlequin and Kidney Spot ladybirds. It
is of course very sunny today. Really
havn't noticed the Kidney ones before.
Redhill in Surrey.

We have about 200 of the things sitting in the gap of our south facing window, have scooped out the ones that got into the house, and due to hoover the other ones tomorrow morning - there was a swarm of them flying around this morning and guess they think my bathroom window is a good place to settle...

As you say, Richard, we have yet to see what effect the Harlequin has on our native species, but I always worry about our (i.e. humans') eagerness to introduce new species to combat other pests. I realise that the Harlequin was probably an accidentally-introduced creature which probably couldn't really be helped, but you mention many other creatures and instances of our messing around with nature and I wonder if we will ever learn!:-/